Word: goizueta
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Since he became chairman of Coca-Cola (1981 sales: more than $6 billion) last March, Cuban-born Roberto Goizueta has added new life to the once staid and secretive company. He has revitalized sales and marketing efforts and erased a lead that Pepsi-Cola had opened in the crucial race for grocery store business. Last week he uncapped his most stunning announcement: the Atlanta-based bottler will spend about $820 million in cash and stock to buy Columbia Pictures (1981 sales: $686.6 million...
...late May the company's 15 directors were summoned by Austin to a special meeting. There they elected a new president: Roberto C. Goizueta, 48, a Cuban-born and Yale-educated chemical engineer who has worked for the company, mainly in technical and administrative jobs, since 1954. Most Coca-Cola watchers assumed that it would be a while before he would be declared the successor of Austin. At 65, Austin had been Coke's chief for 14 years and had already had his retirement postponed for a year, evidently to allow time to groom a successor. But last...
...early announcement seemed designed to quell speculation about the future management of the company. Goizueta's elevation reflects a compromise between the strong-willed Austin and a powerful shareholder, Robert W. Woodruff, 90, who bossed Coke from 1923 to 1955. Woodruff, who remains chairman of the finance committee, had apparently become disturbed by the company, which remains strong but faces some problems. These include a sluggish profit performance (sales were up by nearly 19% in the first half of 1980, but net income rose by only 7.1%) and a challenge in the domestic market from archcompetitor Pepsi-Cola; Pepsi...
...architect, Goizueta started out as a chemist in Coca-Cola's Havana bottling plant; Fidel Castro's 1959 takeover drove him to a job with Coke in the Bahamas. In 1964 he went to the U.S. and began making his way up the company's managerial ranks. Among the tasks he will face in his new job are strengthening the somewhat strained relations Coke has with some of its 550 domestic bottlers and boosting the company's domestic earnings, which now account for only a third of overall profits. "I don't expect anything dramatic...